Mr MALEY - 2002-10-16
Traders in the Mall and their customers are now having to endure anti-social behaviour by an increasing number of itinerants. Minister, what are you doing to stop this kind of behaviour and support our small business traders who are currently doing it tough and operating in the Mall in the CBD?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, the member for Goyder has woken from his slumber, and it is great to see. It must have been that trip to Namibia. He came in here post- that and said: ‘I’ve been reinvigorated. I’ve been reinvigorated, I finally understand what I’ve been elected to do, and that is to represent the people of the Northern Territory’. That’s great. It is good to see the taxpayer getting a great return on that investment in terms of sending him to Namibia, and I welcome his interest.
The issue in terms of itinerants in the Mall has only occurred since 18 August last year. The previous government had many, many years to deal with these issues, and what did we see? We saw absolutely nothing, certainly nothing that made any sort of impact. So it is a bit rich to come in here and expect us to wave a magic wand and clear up a very complex set of social issues overnight.
What I can say - and the member may have been missing during statements in this House - is that we are developing an itinerant strategy. It is not only a paper-based strategy, but a funded strategy with $0.5m allocated this year. That is $0.5m worth of action that we are putting in place. There has been a broad amount of community consultation to try and deal with this problem. It is certainly an investment that the previous government never made in terms of trying to tackle this problem. Public drunkenness, behaviour are issues that need to be tackled.
I can remember standing in this House imploring the previous government to up funding for the Night Patrol, and what did they do? They actually cut it back, they cut back the hours of operation of the Night Patrol. We are going to make it a more effective operation.
There is an Itinerants Strategy. I would urge the member opposite to get a briefing on that. It is a very comprehensive strategy and there is $0.5m allocated to it in this year’s budget.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, the member for Goyder has woken from his slumber, and it is great to see. It must have been that trip to Namibia. He came in here post- that and said: ‘I’ve been reinvigorated. I’ve been reinvigorated, I finally understand what I’ve been elected to do, and that is to represent the people of the Northern Territory’. That’s great. It is good to see the taxpayer getting a great return on that investment in terms of sending him to Namibia, and I welcome his interest.
The issue in terms of itinerants in the Mall has only occurred since 18 August last year. The previous government had many, many years to deal with these issues, and what did we see? We saw absolutely nothing, certainly nothing that made any sort of impact. So it is a bit rich to come in here and expect us to wave a magic wand and clear up a very complex set of social issues overnight.
What I can say - and the member may have been missing during statements in this House - is that we are developing an itinerant strategy. It is not only a paper-based strategy, but a funded strategy with $0.5m allocated this year. That is $0.5m worth of action that we are putting in place. There has been a broad amount of community consultation to try and deal with this problem. It is certainly an investment that the previous government never made in terms of trying to tackle this problem. Public drunkenness, behaviour are issues that need to be tackled.
I can remember standing in this House imploring the previous government to up funding for the Night Patrol, and what did they do? They actually cut it back, they cut back the hours of operation of the Night Patrol. We are going to make it a more effective operation.
There is an Itinerants Strategy. I would urge the member opposite to get a briefing on that. It is a very comprehensive strategy and there is $0.5m allocated to it in this year’s budget.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016